


Can't Help Falling in Love

by Lucky107



Series: Rock 'n' Roll High School [11]
Category: Bully (Video Games)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Swearing, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8290021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: He's laughing at her, at the stupid mistakes she's made, and she knows she deserves that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Can't Help Falling in Love - Elvis Presley - 1961

**March, 2007**

_"Jimmy ain't the one makin' a fool outta you 'n' you know it.  It's Lola.  She's the reason they're all laughin' 'n' you just keep on fallin' for it!"  An shouts.  "Damn it, Johnny, open your eyes 'r you're gonna lose everythin'—not just the girl."_

_But Johnny just tosses his head back into the old, beaten-up sofa and blows another smoke ring into the dusty air.  "Whatever you say, kid."_

_Throwing her hands up in defeat, An storms out of the tenements._

\- - -

When Johnny suggests they meet on the old train bridge An is skeptical.

She's not blind to the fact that her violent outbursts have been detrimental to his efforts to stabilize New Coventry.  She criticizes Johnny for acting out and yet she goes around doing the same damn thing.  It's not only hypocritical of her, but it's dangerous—for everyone.

Thrusting her hands deep into her pockets, she hurries along the muddy dirt road toward the abandoned train yard as Johnny's voice, full of scorn and disappointment, clouds her mind like fog.

He's laughing at her, at the stupid mistakes she's made, and she knows she deserves that.  His disappointment reminds her of how blind she's allowed herself to become.  Lola was never the enemy, and neither was Peanut, and she knows that _now_.

It still doesn't erase what she's done.

Was it really worth it?

An fumbles with a cigarette, but manages to get the filter between her lips with a shaking hand.  It's far too late to waste her time second-guessing.

 

She arrives early to find Johnny is already waiting.

He leans into the chain-link fence overlooking Bullworth Town, fingers wound tightly around the cold steel, with hollow eyes reflective of a wandering mind.  When he fails to acknowledge that she's arrived, she offers a gruff, "hey," around her smoke.

Johnny is caught off-guard in a moment of vulnerability, but his dark eyes search her face for a cue.  There's none.  "You're early."

"That makes two of us," An offers and she holds out her cigarette, but he declines the offer with a wave of his hand.  When he returns his attention to the bleak street below she drops the smoke and crushes it out with the toe of her shoe.  "So, what's the problem?"

Unsettling silence blankets the winter scenery.

If it were merely about her recent behavior, Johnny would have been laid into her already because he knows better than to hold back when he gives An a piece of his mind.  He would have been pacing when she arrived, a whirlwind of emotion, but he's totally calm.  In fact, he's almost _peaceful_ and that's not the Johnny that An knows.

In her mind he's more than just some two-bit gangster and self-crowned king of the slums.  She has him idolized all out proportion: to a kid who grew up without a chance in New Coventry, he represents hope.  He provides the underdog with a family to fall back on and adequate shelter from a cruel and unforgiving world.  He's never doubted her loyalty—when he says 'jump', she asks 'how high'—and he knows she would die for him if he'd let her.

Being filled with such apathy is a dangerous way for a high school student to live.

"Word sure gets 'round, huh?"  He's vague in his remark, but she's not ignorant to the context.  Her scuffle with Peanut was bound to kick up dust.  "Look, An, stop actin' like you's expectin' me to whack ya—"

"If not that, then what?"

Johnny offers her a side-long glance full of emotions she doesn't recognize and it leaves her to wonder if he's still suffering from heartbreak over his recent falling out with Lola.  Maybe the exposure of Peanut's tryst with her behind his back is still eating him up.

He sniffles loudly, no doubt feeling the effects of cold, and offers, "Maybe I wanted to thank ya."

An stifles a bitter laugh.  "I ain't done nothin' but cause you trouble, Vincent."

"Now that ain't true 'n' you know it," he counters.  "You stood up for me—for _us_ —when no one else did 'n' I didn't give ya enough credit for that.  I didn't see what ya were doin' then because I didn't want to see, but you seen it all from the very start."

"I'm sorry I said anythin'," she laments.  "Whole lotta shit coulda been avoided if I'd just kept my damn mouth shut."

This time An leans into the fence herself, the chain-link bending beneath her weight just enough to cause a skip in her heart.  With the lax suspension it provides, she almost feels like she's flying—and she realises just why Johnny enjoys this spot so much.

But the view of Bullworth Town leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

"I coulda seen the whole damn thing from up here if I'd opened my eyes sooner," Johnny muses.  "I coulda seen it all 'n' yet I told myself it was hearsay.  Told myself you was a fool for actin' so tough, but you ain't no fool, An.  You's just doin' what ya gotta, what I _make_ ya—"

"Enough with the self-pity, Johnny," An interjects, but her voice lacks the hard edge she's shooting for.  The look in her eyes completely derails his train of thought.  "You ain't the only one been hurtin'."

An was tough - one of the toughest Johnny had ever known - but lately she had been acting so damn proud.

He never realised that her heart was breaking.

"Who was it?"

Risking a glance in her direction with unveiled surprise only serves to sour the mood and whatever inkling she once had to talk pops like a balloon.  Stubbornness and foolish pride plunges them back into a silence that leaves Johnny guessing.

The first name that comes to mind is Peanut.  When it became clear that Peanut was fooling around with Lola behind Johnny's back, something inside of her broke: two black eyes, a broken nose and a crushed hand when all he'd said was 'Hello'.  But An was never particularly good friends with Peanut and he'd never known her to be shy.  If it had been something like that, the poor boy would never have looked at Lola in that way...

_Jimmy._

When he thinks about Jimmy, about his smug little face and his beady little eyes, his blood boils.  An's always looked out for Jimmy against her better judgement, vouching for that big ol' heart of his.  It seems so stupidly obvious that Johnny almost crushes a fistful of chain-link fence when he realises it—but he doesn't.

No, because if it had been Jimmy he would have to be a damn fool to ignore An's affection.  If it were Jimmy, he'd—

"It was Gord."

_That fuckin' Boy Scout?_

Was it out of spite or self-gratification that he set his sights on An after everything that had transpired with Lola?

Johnny doesn't know— _doesn't care_ —because that sack of rich shit is hardly worth the time of day, but he crushes the chain-link fence in his hand at the mere thought.  The wheels in his mind begin to turn, conjuring up all the ways in which he could _kill_ Gord for this, but he abandons the idea when he hears An sniffling beside him.

As reluctant as she is to let herself cry in front of the strongest man she's ever known, whatever transpired is hurting her— _bad_.

It hurts him to think that she's been so blindly loyal to him for all these years and he never would have noticed that her heart was breaking because he had been so caught up in himself.  He had allowed his own pride to alienate those who meant the most to him and that hurts more than the walking out of any broad.

An had been right all along.

"C'mere," he offers and he envelopes her in a long-overdue embrace.

Entangled in his strong arms she finds the shelter she's always known him to provide.  He's become the family she can turn to when she's truly all alone and that last shimmer of hope in a world that's darkened and cold.  He's the only one person with both the power to destroy her and the power to save her, but he does neither.

Instead, Johnny provides An with the one thing she needs the most right now: a place where it's not weak to fall apart, only human.

\- - -

_Strangers._

_They were mere strangers the first time they met.  The circumstances were unconventional, but Johnny knocked the kid down with a single punch and asked, "You okay?"_

_Her attention was torn between her attacker, then lying face-down on the tarmac, and her savior, from whom she didn't even receive a smile.  An nodded meekly.  "Am now—thanks to you."_

_The stranger offered a gloved hand to An and she hesitated to accept his assistance on account of her compromising position, but she did so in a show of gratitude.  The older boy pulled her to her feet without incident before introducing himself.  "Name's Johnny Vincent."_

_Johnny Vincent._

_An had heard the name before, spoken both in glory and in fear.  His reputation as rebel with a bad attitude, or so she'd been told, with a long-standing history of violence predated him.  No one had ever mentioned that he liked to play the hero, though: he thwarted off her tormentor without so much as batting an eyelash and his humble disposition betrayed that bad boy image._

_"An Hoàng."_

_Johnny's expression changed in an instant, as apathy faded into mild amusement that struck An as oddly out of place.  "So, you're the fresh meat Lefty's been goin' on about, huh?  Chin up, kid—I've only heard good things 'bout you."_

\- - -

By the time An's eyes are dry the sun is beginning to fade.

It's not like her to be so candid with her feelings, but she seems a little less tense now that she has been.  She's leaning against the chain-link fence again, observing the people down below as they carry about their lives, but Johnny keeps a close eye on her.

 _I coulda seen the whole damn thing from up here if I'd opened my eyes sooner..._   His voice echoes in her mind, disheartened and lonely.  _I coulda seen it all 'n' yet I told myself it was hearsay._

They're one and the same, An Hoàng and Johnny Vincent.

She wants to believe this development is a recent one, but deep down inside she knows it isn't—they've been this way for as long as she can remember, like reflections standing on opposite sides of the same mirror, but it's taken them three years to realise it.


End file.
